viva la france!!

I love Europe. I have always wanted to go to France. Even though the French hate Americans, I still forgive them because of things such as cafe's and CHOCO-DUO. For anyone who has not experienced the Choco-duo goodness, you have missed out in life. Basically it is Nutella swirled with white-chocolate goodness (If you dont know what Nutella is, then stop reading my blog and go educate yourself!). It is the best thing that has ever gone into my mouth. You can put it on anything, really, but lately it has been the Ritz crackers that have done it for me. Enough about food for now.

Manny and I decided we had to needed something a little more exciting than Sembach, Ger. We decided to rent a the smallest Euro-car we could and drive to France. Neither Manny or I had ever been so we were quite excited. We decided on the city of Metz, which would turn out to be an excellant choice. Since both of have big races coming up, and the whole reason we are here in Germany is to train, we brought our bikes with us. As you can see bikes, small car, gear, food, and two rather small people still had a little trouble fitting in our "speedy" 1.8L Fiat Punto. I think my diet coke had more volume than our engine. After an 1:15hr session at 150KPH pushing 6,000RPM we arrived outside of Metz. We quickly assembled our bikes and headed out to the French coutnryside. Two hours later it was time for a mexican shower (shown in picture) and a deck change before we headed into the city. Metz was exactly what I pictured in my mind. By some act of God we found the city centre on our first try, despite the fact that we knew ZERO Frech. This no doubt led many a French waiter to shake there heads and turn their noses up in disgust. We walked around the streets, which were closed off to traffic, and found this hip, little bistro to eat at. I decided to be adventurous and test my culinary chops and try a random dish, but ended up ordering the world's best salad (field greens, prosciutto, tomatoes, olive oil&balsalmic, eggs, and the secret ingredient: creme fraiche). For the main course, I thought I ordered scallops in a creme sauce, but I ordered chicken in creme sauce with the best frites (french fries) I have ever had. Afterwards it was time to walk around the city and see all the beautiful architechture and other attractions Metz had to offer. As we had a long drive back to Germany, another long training day, and a trip to Luxembourg scheduled for the following day we called it am early night. Metz was awesome and I would love to go back and explore the whole city sometime. Well, this blog is already entirely too long, and I assume the next post will be the same as I recap the Luxembourg trip. Until next time, L'au revoir